US Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced on November 22 that the US stops supplying to Russia the data on conventional arms in Europe. Furthermore, Russian inspectors would not be admitted to US military bases in Europe. What could be the reasoning behind the radical US step which, it must be noted, fits with a wider trend in Washington's decision-making?

I address you today in connection with the situation concerning the NATO countries’ missile defence system in Europe.

Russia’s relations with the USA and NATO in the missile defence area have a long and complicated history. I remember that when US President Barack Obama revised his predecessor’s plans to build a missile defence system in Europe in September 2009, we welcomed this as a positive step.

On November 23, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev addressed the citizens of Russia – and also, from a broader perspective, a number of the world's countries – in connection with the alarming situation which has arisen as a result of the US and NATO efforts to build a broad missile defense system in Europe.

Strategic and Tactical Nuclear Arms Modernization vis-a-vis the BMD Program

The functional feature of the contemporary BMD infrastructure of the US and its key NATO allies is that their missile defense assets are never used per se or alone or separately from their strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. The BMD capabilities and nuclear arms always operate together.

The positions which Washington and the NATO headquarters in Brussels adopted at the consultations on a joint Russia-USA/NATO European ballistic missile defense (BMD) system have recently drawn a new round of criticisms from the Russian military-political leadership. Such stances on the current state of the consultations was expressed by Russia's President and Armed Forces Supreme Commander-in-Chief Dmitry Medvedev, Premier Vladimir Putin, diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov, and defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

The statement about a possible division of Kosovo made by the chairman of the Kosovo Assembly Jakup Krasniqi ahead of the resumption of talks between Belgrade and Pristine may give a new direction to the burning discussion on Kosovo issue.

"THE FUTURE OF POLITICS will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated in her article which appeared in the November 2011 issue of Foreign Policy under a powerful title "America's Pacific Century." The Editors were even more explicit when they put "Our Pacific Century" on the cover.

The American diplomat has gone much further than mere statements of the region's impressive economic growth which shifted the center of world economy to Asia. She has made it clear that America intends to dominate the APR. Diplomatically the formula "America's Pacific Century" is highly ambiguous; placed in the context of the coming presidential elections it looks like a gauntlet thrown down to that part of the American opposition that talks about "coming home" to address the economic crisis and financial instability.

Secretary Clinton is ready with an answer: We shall resist "the gravitational pull of these 'come home' debates" to regroup our forces and pivot our strategy on the region which promises prosperity.

On September 8, Russian president D. Medvedev, German chancellor A. Merkel, prime ministers of France and the Netherlands Francois Fillon and Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Erwin Sellering, EU Energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger, and CEOs of Nord Stream consortium partners inaugurated the Nord Stream pipeline and opened the flow at the Western side of the world's longest gas transit link. The event drew massive media coverage in Germany.

On November 6, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega was re-elected winning 64 % of votes. The key points of his election program are laconic and comprehensible for Nicaraguan people: socialism, Christianity, free market. Ortega’s opponents have failed to come up with a more convincing alternative. His closest rival - an 80 year-old (!) Fabio Gadea from the Independent Liberal Party - received 29 % of votes. The preliminary results show that Sandinistas and their supporters will prevail in the new parliament.

It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that, while social media like Facebook and Twitter can be instrumental in bringing crowds of discontent to the streets, the protesters will in all cases be led by those who have built a real rather than virtual organization geared towards inducing a regime change. This could not be a secret to the US strategists who incited revolts via social media in the Middle East. Aware that politicized Islam was the best-organized force in the Arab street, they also had to know that Islamists would eventually prevail.